Say Something
by Chloe Masen
Summary: Have you ever been hurt by words from the mouth of someone you loved? Have you ever wished you could be? This is a collection of moments of both, inspired by a song.
1. Chapter 1: A Dying Meadow

**What can I say? That haunting and beautiful song has laid claim on my brain. Thank you to A Great Big World for it, and to Stephenie Meyer for Twilight and its characters. I mean in no way to infringe on either.**

**Say Something**

**Scene One: A Dying Meadow**

I don't know what happened. How it all went so horribly wrong. How I ended up here… on my knees… both of them instead of one…

I had the ring in my pocket. I was ready to ask Bella to be my wife. Hell, I'd _been _ready… but I finally thought that she was, too. To be asked and to say yes and…

Well…

I thought _wrong_. Not because she said no...

I never even got the chance to ask her.

But because she didn't say anything at all. After she said things I never thought I'd hear from her. And after I said things I never thought I'd say to. Stupid things. Hurtful things. Things that had no place and no purpose and no right to destroy us.

We _loved _each other. We didn't hurt, or abuse, or torment…

But we're all of those things now. Hurt and abused and tormented. And none of what we were before. Before I brought us to our meadow to forever change our lives. Brought us to our sacred sanctuary. A place that, a few hours ago, and every hour we'd ever spent in it before those few, bloomed with life and love and hope.

And a place that doesn't now. Isn't blooming with anything. I see it dying all around me. The flowers wilting, the grass drying up, the life seeping out of it all as the minutes tick by. _Quietly_.

Bella is serenading me with silence. After she sang her cruel song at the top of her lungs, making sure I couldn't and wouldn't miss a note of it, she ran out of breath. And took all of mine away.

This was supposed to be a joyous day. A celebration of our love.

Not the burial it's become. Not _this_…

Not for _us_…

Us that has stopped feeling solid to me. I can feel her, she's still close, but the feel _of _her is different. Her hands in mine, her forehead against… they feel cold. Even though the sun beats down on us...

It can't warm what's already dead.

"Say something," I tell her for the hundredth time, trying for the same to breathe life back into us.

But still she doesn't. And won't let me. And won't give me any more than she already has.

I told her I loved her… after those other things I said…

But she didn't seem to hear me.

And I told her I was sorry. With all of my heart and from the bottom of. But hers had stopped beating for me, and so, didn't feel mine breaking for her.

Nothing I've said has made a difference. And I don't think anything I could can.

She's stopped listening to me. Stopped existing for me. And stopped being a something for me to hold on to. An anything that will let me, though still I try… "Dammit, Bella! Say something!"

Nothing…

"Say _anything_!"

Not this...

This nothing at all that I hear…

"Don't say nothing! I deserve more than that from you! _We _deserve more!"

But sadly I'm the only one of us who thinks so.

I've begged her. I've pleaded with her. Felt the pride I swallowed bounce up and crash down again and again like a brick in my gut at each heartfelt effort that she silently disregarded as a meaningless nothing.

Because it's what I am to her now.

What I've become.

She won't even look at me. Not now that she has nothing to say.

I saw her eyes when her mouth was lashing at me… whipping me with its ire…

But as the welts rose up and surfaced, they fell from me. And she won't give them back.

She won't give me anything.

The everything I wanted to give her is all I have, and it's my own. I'll never get to share it with her. She doesn't want it. Just like that, she doesn't.

And though I'd have followed her anywhere, throwing it into her path, just for the delight of watching her stop every few steps and reach down for it with a smile on her face, I won't follow her to where she's gone now.

Though she still sits in front of me…

And touches, even…

She isn't really here. And I can't go to where she is.

So, I try one more time to bring her back to me. "Say something, I'm giving up on you."

And hear, without a word from her, that it doesn't matter to her if I do.

Because she already gave up on me.


	2. Chapter 2: Effortless

**Scene Two: Effortless**

"_She doesn't love you the way you love her, Edward. __She wouldn't fight for you. To keep or to hold or to stand beside. __She wouldn't shed tears or blood or even sweat in that nonexistent battle. __She doesn't love you like that..."_

"_She simply loves that you love her like that."_

My sister Alice's words to me one night just as I'd returned home from taking Bella to hers had shocked and surprised me. Because they weren't ones she'd say.

And once heard, I'd tossed them from my mind as if I'd never heard their not and not right sound at all. Dismissed them as they'd dismissed Bella. Because they weren't true about. Couldn't be, I'd thought. (And because we'd all been watching The Vow together just before I'd taken Bella home, and my youngest sister was obviously still a little caught up in it.)

But then they'd haunted me. Because I feared that they were. Because my sister _Alice _had said them.

If it had been Rose, my older and 'harder' sister, they'd have stayed discarded. And been forgotten, like she's wanted me to do with Bella since the day I met her. But Alice…

They really _weren't _ones she'd say, no matter what she'd been caught up in. Unless they were an existing truth that she was and just couldn't keep quiet about. Or hidden from me. Because she loves me.

I started to pay attention to everything Bella did and said after that. Closer attention than I had been.

And in doing that, I realized that she never did or said much at all. And that the doing and saying was all me.

An I love you, if not given to her first, was never given to me.

A touch, if not extended by my hands to her first, was never felt by me.

There was no effort. No work. And no 'just because' play. All things, that when you love someone, you give and do without thought. And without any effort at all.

The effort it was taking me to hold it all back from her was extreme. And exhausting. And _painful_. Because it was killing me and she didn't even seem to notice.

I went back to Alice with a heavy heart… and asked her if she knew anything else. If her gift of sight of moments in time we were yet to spend or experience had given her anything else she could give me.

And she didn't say anything. But she didn't have to. Her eyes had said it all. And her too gentle squeeze of my hand.

I'd waited for Bella my entire unnatural life…

But waiting to lose her was something too unnatural to spend time waiting for. In my heart that, no matter what else it was or wasn't, was _pure_.

I loved her with all of it. And love her still…

But a love unreturned is one I won't continue to give to her. Not if she won't put forth any effort to keep it. Or to show me that it means anything to her to have it. Or would, if she were at risk of losing it.

I had to know. If Alice was right, and if everything I had believed in with my pure heart was wrong.

I went to Bella's house today. Was waiting for her when she arrived home from wherever she'd been. We hadn't seen each other or even spoken in three days… because _I _hadn't made the effort. And had made every excruciating effort to not do either.

I had waited with a dying hope in my heart that my phone would ring, or that she'd show up at my door when hers didn't and I didn't show up at hers…

But that dying hope was not nourished with any life-restoring care from her. It was simply left to continue to die its miserable and lonely death.

And when she saw me today waiting outside of her house, she didn't ask me where I'd been or what I'd been doing for those three days, or even how I was. She didn't kiss me or hug me or say that she'd missed me or was happy to see me. She didn't even smile at me. An effortless thing for the mouth of a person who loves, or cares at all.

But still I gave her a chance. To prove me wrong, and the pictures in my sister's head lifeless.

And if this chance I gave her was a test, she failed it. Is failing it still with her effortless silence. Her nonexistent battle.

I told her we were leaving this place I'd found her in. This place I'd thought we'd found _each other_ in. _The _each other, and the missing halves of ourselves.

I told her that we had no choice but to go to another. And not much else.

And I waited for her to ask me why. Ask me all or any of the things I hadn't offered her. Or ask me or tell me anything at all.

Like not to go, maybe. Or to take her with me, hopefully.

I waited…

For nothing.

"Say something, Bella. Please."

_Give me a reason, just one, to stay right here with you…_

I waited…

"I have some things at your house. Could you bring them to me before you go?"

For her to tell me to stop.

With no effort at all.

**.**

**.**

**Confused? Yeah, I thought maybe that would happen. Or had already, after the first part of this, that I didn't mean for to make anyone...**

**So, let me try to explain what my summary obviously wasn't clear enough to. These scenes... these _moments_... are separate. They're not connected to each other in any way, and are each complete where left. You won't get any answers or explanations after you've read them. You won't get anything else at all, but a new and different the next time.**

**That being made clear now (hopefully), I don't expect any of you to still want them, or anything more here. It's a strange and unusual thing to do, I suppose... this experiment of words of sorts that I'm conducting... but it _is_ what this is. And what it will keep being until my brain tells me it's over. **

**So, sorry for the confusion. And thank you for giving it the chance to be something else, even if you stop now, knowing that it isn't.**

**xo**


	3. Chapter 3: Too Beautiful

**This might hurt just a little.**

**Scene Three: Too Beautiful**

"Bella? Please, Bella..."

She's never been so quiet. Never been so still. Not even when she slept.

My beautiful angel of a girl...

Her slumber was always alive. Breathing and giving. Animated. And entertaining, even. Because when she slept she often dreamt of me.

I watched her every night. My eyes and ears captivated. By her beauty and her love for me, both unmistakable even as the world, and she, slept.

I heard every breath and whisper, saw every smile and flutter, and wanted to forever.

I wanted Bella to _live_. To laugh through the days and dream through the nights, both endless for me, and do it all with me endlessly by her side.

I wanted her heart to beat. Strong and long with its more beautiful than anything to my ears song. I wanted it _more_ than anything…

"Oh, please, Bella…"

I wanted it too much.

Because I wanted it so much that I was careless. With it and with her.

She'd asked me to stop it a thousand times. Her heart…

To silence it, so that it could be like mine. And so that she could be like me. Alive but not. And be it forever with me.

She loved me enough to. To ask for it. Beg for it, even…

But I loved her too much to do it.

She asked a thousand times and I told her no the same.

And one too many.

Because the last time she asked me was today. Just a few hours ago. Before her heart stopped and her pleading request died on her lips.

"Please!"

And before I changed my mind. And had a selfish change of heart. Too late for her to know it.

I never wanted to give Bella forever with me. Because I thought she deserved _better_.

The life that she thought would be better than any was, to me, a curse. And not one I wanted to ever touch her, though I couldn't stop myself from.

I wanted her to LIVE. Live like I couldn't. Live purely, the way God intended. And do it for as long as she could. For years and years and years, even though someday those years would end and end me.

I wanted her to have the best of everything. And I wanted to give her as much of that best that I could. And, so, I just couldn't fathom giving her the worst of something. The worst kind of life, even if it meant I'd get to share mine with her forever.

I wanted her enough to want to keep her whole. And because I did, I broke her.

Those years and years and years I thought she'd have, thought we'd have together, were hardly any at all.

And not fucking enough.

I saw her years, her very life, come to an end right before my eyes, and though it was the most excruciatingly painful thing I could ever have imagined, it wasn't _only_ that. And didn't only destroy me.

It made me angry. Furious. It made me mad as hell!

And that mad as hell made me weak.

And strong enough to think I could challenge God's will. His carried out intentions.

I thought I could take her right from His path to Heaven arms and bring her back to the Hell of mine. Just like she'd always wanted me to. Because she loved me enough to make that sacrifice.

My savage demonly nature took over. I surrendered to it in every way I'd fought to fight most of my whole unnatural life.

I descended upon the angel. Attacked her with a vengeance. A vengeful _purpose_.

To drain her. Not of life but of death. Death that took her years and years and years too soon.

I was going to take her back from it. Laugh in its face after I had. And hear Bella's laughter forever, just like she wanted me to.

But the answer I'd always given her… the No…

Is all I have now.

Because the sound of her heartbeat…

That beautiful sound I thought I wanted to hear more than any other…

Was the last sound of her that I will ever.

Because I let it beat one beat too long.

Because I let it beat its last before I was willing to let the too beautiful sound of it go.

"Oh God, Bella, I'm sorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry!..."


End file.
